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Definitely, one of the best suggestions of draining the swamp would simply to move agency HQs out of DC.
I think this would also have the salutory effect of attracting less people who are in it for the power and prestige (and thus want to be in DC, near power brokers), and attract more people who are actually competent and want to do the job.
See also: #756327
You know that in our profession there's a pretty strong correlation between status obsession and technical competence. My guess is that there would be a permanent reduction in competence.
Who cares, though? It's not like most of that work is valuable.
Good point. At the lower levels, recent grad and early/mid career levels, I would definitely agree. Not as sure about leadership levels though.
I only know a few older government economists and their competence level is frankly an embarrassment to the profession.
I'm just catching back up here.
A government economists seems like an oxymoron and I'm sure it is.
I think the best government employees are Park Rangers. And guess where they have to work?
Most economists work for the government. It's not ideal.
It's ideal for them because they can't get a job doing anything else. It's welfare.
That's really not true. They just can't get jobs that are nearly so easy.
Economists actually have lots of job opportunities in the private sector, but we don't generally want them.
Moving the department headquarters out of DC would also cause a lot of people to quit.